Russell Davies

interesting 2011 - second lot of tickets

Will be on sale this Thursday (the 28th) at 11am. Here.

but what about Wendy Cope's last.fm account?

James wisely responded to the news of the acquisition of Wendy Cope's archive with this comment on delicious:

""Elaborate signatures, perfumed missives and intimate scribbled secrets are set to disappear from literary archives as they become increasingly full of one-line emails, spam and Amazon.co.uk receipts." – This is the dumb response to the amazing future news."

I'm sufficiently up myself to want to point out that I anticipated that amazing future for authors and scholars and wrote about it in Wired. You can, should you wish to, go there and read it.

rivers, fishing, the sea, might be the connection, and blazers

As I enter my twilight years I am increasingly of this opinion.

the pretending layer

I was chatting to Max the other day, trying to impress him, as I always am, by telling him about some thinking I've been doing about dashboards.

I've been looking at various dashboards for a little project and the problem with them seems to be that they look like Excel. They're very clear, sensible and readable but the people who are supposed to use them (media, marketingy people) aren't using them as much as they should.

I think it's because they want a dashboard on their screen to make them feel like some sort of Master Of The Universe Trader, or Spy or NASA controller. Their expectations have been set by this. They don't want to feel like an accountant. So maybe they need some more exciting fonts and blinky red buttons - to add the appropriate pretending affordances.

And Max just said - yeah, the pretending layer and moved on. But I was bowled over with the genius of that formulation. Because that's what we need to add to so many things, to give them that extra neccesary magic. A pretending layer. So it's not just a useful or beautiful or functional object - it's got some little nod to who we're pretending to be when we're using it. I've thought a lot about pretending, before. But it's that phrase 'the pretending layer' that really makes it work.

That's the pretending layer. The layer you add when you've solved the important problems, made the thing work properly and seamlessly. It's the extra bit. The things I love the most have a pretending layer, so they're not just for the practical me, they're for the imaginary me.

Anyway. Well done Max.

Interesting 2011 - ticket news

As discussed before, Interesting's going to be a bit different this year. Less listening to talks, more doing odd things. Food things, physics things, design things, hacky things, simulating nuclear fission. So I think we need to let fewer people in, to create more room. And we'll need to charge a bit more, to cover the extra costs of materials and offset the fewer people.

So we're just going to sell 200 tickets and they're going to be £40 each. Hope that's not too much. (Previous speakers will still get in free.)

People have been badgering me about tickets so despite not really having the programme finalised I thought we'd put the first lot of 50 tickets on sale on Friday at 10am. I know it's a Bank Holiday so you might be doing other things but, equally it's easier for all the people who can't get tickets when at work.

Before buying a ticket please consider these factors:

1. We've never done it like this before. It probably won't be very good.

2. We might well ask you to bring things with you - cooking stuff, pots and pans etc - that might put you off.

3. You won't enjoy it if you're not going to join in. And some of the activities might require being in groups of four or so. If you don't like that sort of thing please think on. And/or book tickets with friends.

4. It's a Saturday in June. Are you sure you don't have a wedding to go to?

5. If not a wedding there must be something better.

6. I think that's it. Just generally, please manage your expectations down. Just think of it as a waste of £40.

So, Saturday June 18th. Conway Hall. All day. £40. Get your tickets here from 10am on Friday 22nd of April.

newspaper club - now even more available in the US

 

We can take dollars! We have a fancy .com domain! We're prepared to countenance spelling colour without the u! What are you waiting for? Details.

homesense bikemap

And here's my other Homesense project. Made which much assistance from Tom and Andy.

It's very simple. If there are more than five bikes at one of these bike stations the relevant LED comes on. It's a glanceable guide to which way to walk when we head out. It's going on the wall by the door. No need to reach for a device, launch an app and navigate to our favourites.

Simple, but I think, good.

well, have you?

We've finally finished our first Homesense project. It took so long because we went wildly beyond the scope of the project and the hardware you're supposed to use and even more wildly beyond my technical abilities. So Daniel has had to be very kind and patient with us.

However. Marvin The Discrete Reminderer is now up and running and sitting on the shelf in our bathroom, opposite the toilet.

The IR ranger on his head detects the presence of an individual poised to use the facilities and lights a red LED to indicate that Marvin is 'armed'. On completion of toilet activities, when the user departs the immediate vicinity, Marvin then issues one of three enjoinders to remember to flush - playable below. (This was an issue in our house, though in the time it's taken to make this, has become less so.)

 

Marvin1

 

Marvin2

 

Marvin3

 

These were recorded by Arthur and mucked about with in Record.

And why have we done such a stupid thing? Not sure really - partly to see how to do it but mostly to honour Arthur's first idea. He wanted Marvin to talk. This was a useful thing for him to talk about. So we did it. Think of it as proto-RodneyComp.